My One And Only

Dan Kois and Allison Benedikt have a podcast for Slate called Mom and Dad are Fighting.  It’s a podcast about parenting issues, and I listen to it nearly every week it's on.

 

In the latest edition of the podcast, one of their topics was the social stigma attached to being the parent of an only child.  Neither Kois nor Benedikt are parents of singletons, so they can’t really relate personally, but they do generally come down on the side of “hey, you shouldn’t judge someone for the number of kids that they choose to have or not have.”  (All the while admitting to their own biases:  Benedikt doesn’t get the singleton parent thing, and Kois thinks anyone with more than three kids is out of their minds, to paraphrase.  Psst, I’m with you, Dan.  More than three seems like you're assembling your own army against yourself.)

 

Anyway, my kid’s an only child, as you may have noticed.  We’re not planning on more.  Part of that is made easy by the fact of biology – it took a long time to get The Boy, and I was 40.5 years old (almost to the day) by the time he was born.  So the odds of bringing forth new life again for The Working Dad and me were slim to begin with.

 

But to be honest, before we started trying to have a child, before we discovered that I had premature ovarian failure and that having even one would be difficult, we were pretty much planning to have only one.  We would occasionally muse on the idea of two (especially in the year or so after The Boy was born), but if I’m honest, we seriously only envisioned a single child.

 

And there were a lot of reasons for that, but chiefly, we wanted to devote all of our energies to the single child.  We both thought that it would be better for the child and for us to have the single focus.

 

This is no slight to families with more than one child or to our own upbringings – I’m the oldest of two and my husband is the middle of three.  But for us, one and only seemed to be the right choice.

 

I’m not going to say that we gave too much thought to the over-population argument for smaller families, although we certainly were not unaware of it.

 

I think that, for me, two things were going on:  allocation of personal and financial resources towards the child, and odds of my being present for the child through maturity.

 

It's cheaper with one child.  But it's not just that it's cheaper, we'll never have to do the per child budgeting other parents do. No dollar limits on gifts to be "fair."  No juggling the checkbook to pay for an expensive activity for one child while worrying about slighting the other child with the less expensive hobby.

And our time can be devoted solely to the one guy. Sometimes, that means both of us are present with our son at an activity. Sometimes, that means one of us is with our son while the other one takes care of family chores like grocery shopping or home maintenance.  It's a juggling act, still, but there are fewer balls to keep in the air with just the one guy. 

And, of course, you should not underestimate the benefit of not being out-numbered (or even even-teamed) by the children in the house.  One child can never gang up on you. (He can still say hurtful things and frustrate you, but he's got no back-up. Which, come to think of it, is good for him too...because a lot of life is going up against someone or something more powerful than yourself, mostly on your own.)

Maybe this all sounds a little selfish to the parents of siblings. And maybe it is a little. But all efforts are towards giving our one child the best start he can possibly have. 

Because we won't be here forever. He will lose his parents, in all likelihood, at a younger age than many of his peers because we are older by about (or more) a decade than many of our parent peers.  I will be 58 years old when The Boy graduates from high school.  I believe my grandmother was younger than that when she became a grandmother for the first time.

We need The Boy to be as well prepared for the world as possible. Better prepared than his parents were so that he can hit the ground running and not spend a decade or more figuring it all out.... And we want to leave him financially secure.

Still, there are all these cultural ideas hovering around that stopping at one kid is a disservice to the child.

"You are depriving your child of the joy of having a sibling."  To which many an only child friend of mine might respond, "Why, no.  You can't miss what you do not have."  Sure, he may wonder about what it might be like to have a sister or brother. But I wondered about what having a sister would be like, so these flights of fancy about alternate sibling relationships are not limited to singletons. AND not all siblings find having their siblings to be a joy. There's no guarantee that your kids will like each other. Some people find having a sibling to be a real chore and a constant source of conflict. We can't all be Jane and Elizabeth Bennett. (Besides, remember, they had Lydia for a sister too....)

But the most annoying criticism that's been lodged against us as parents of a singleton has, generally, come from strangers who make judgements about our son's behavior because he's an only child. Because three-year-old kids with siblings never misbehave in public....  No, kids who live with other kids are always angels, always waiting their turn, never screaming or pouting, never being aggressive on the playground like those awful, spoiled and coddled singletons.

;-)

One woman so much as told my friend (also a singleton mom) and me one day at the park that we needed to have another child so to better socialize our kids.

What evs, lady. Our kids play with 14 other kids at pre-school every day -- and were, in fact, playing with each other right that very moment -- so they're plenty socialized.

Study after study shows that singletons do just as well or better than kids with siblings. But there's still the societal myth that two would be better.

Maybe it's primal:  more kids equals more likelihood that your genes will survive through the ages.

Maybe that's what the lady in the park meant:  She observed my friend and me (and our excellent spouses because we were all four there with the two kids).  She saw how delightful all four parents were, and how adorable our only children were, and she thought, "What a tragedy! We need more people in the world like these good people. Please, on behalf of humanity, I implore you fine citizens to reproduce again!"

Yes, maybe that's what she meant. 

I confess: I use canned foods.

It's true. I don't soak my beans. I don't hand-dice my tomatoes. I must apologize to America's Test Kitchen and foodies everywhere because I use Wick Fowler's 2 Alarm Chili Mix and Rotel Tomatoes and Morning Star meatless crumbles to make chili on a rainy day. On sunny days too.... Because it's easier.

THE END

Oh, Gwyneth.....

Dear Gwyneth Paltrow,

I understand that you have recently spoken with envy, if not wistfully and romantically, about the ease and regularity of a 9-to-5 working mom's life, rather than the grueling life of an Oscar-winning, multi-millionaire, one-movie-a-year mom, like yourself.  (Among other things, apparently, you think we get all our work done in the morning....why can't I leave at noon every day, then?  Oh, wait. There's more work in the afternoon.)

Mackenzie Dawson said it best in her Open Letter to you in the NY Post, but I feel compelled (me being "The Working Mom," and all) to throw my two cents in.

So, Gwyneth, dear, please click this link to get a feel for just how "easy" my 9-to-5, work-a-day week is. Boy, don't you envy doing that EVERY WEEK FOR 20-TO-40 YEARS?  Doesn't that seem so easy to do FOR DECADES?

Don't get me wrong. I love my life. But it is a balancing act -- standing one-legged on the seat of a bicycle perched on a tightrope under which there is no net.

A loved life, full of joys, but not easy-peasy.

So, Gwyneth, I'm going to give you a break and assume that you're just out of touch, having lived your entire life in Hollywood privilege such that you can't understand that it's not just a simple thing to be a regular-old-9-to-5 working mom... and I will not, tempting though it may be, automatically assume that what you actually are is a total, um, a word that rhymes with "May Pole." 

I choose to believe that you just don't understand, not that you're utterly callous. (But maybe you should avoid 9-to-5, working mom roles in your movies. Especially if you're method?  Are you method?  I don't know, and I'm too busy to go look it up.  Is "method" even the right term?)

Chin up, Gwyneth, because even though I don't know what your world is like, I feel your pain at being separated from your kids for weeks at a time by your filming schedule. That would be terrible. I feel it every day when I send The Boy to preschool. And you are right, being able to come home to him every day makes my work-a-day world a little more bearable.

Love, The Working Mom

P.S.  I really liked you in Sliding Doors. 

Tolerance

I wanted to write a blog post today because, well, I wanted to.

A friend recently gave me the idea to write about all the wonderful benefits of age – specifically, the fact that age gives you the extremely blissful ability and desire to say of most thing, “aw, blow it off and get you a beer, who cares?”  Trivial stuff actually DOES seem trivial at this age.  And that’s a great topic, but then . . . .

The Federal District Court in San Antonio published its opinion/order in Deleon v. Perry, in which it finds Texas’s gay marriage ban unconstitutional on the basis that (broad over simplification of the opinion to follow) it violates the 14^th Amendment’s protections of due process and equal protection under the law.  So I thought I’d write about that.

But then I read this article about over-achieving mom/parent culture at school (and how we parents – and the schools too -- should all just simmer down a little bit), which, paired with all of the crazy things I’ve seen on Pinterest, lead me to concur that we’ve all gone just a little bit overboard on, e.g., our kids’ Valentines cards and gifts.

AND THEN, I read a story about a new study – a single study – that found that, basically, if you didn’t breastfeed your baby, no harm/no foul.  Your kid is not permanently damaged because you didn’t give him/her sufficient boob juice with all kinds of magical and beneficial hoosiewhatsits in it.  And for those of us who had a hard time producing enough milk to fill even one bottle, this was welcome news.  (It was also welcome news to those of us who have been milk-shamed for not breastfeeding or not “trying hard enough” to breastfeed.)

Then I realized something:  all of these things have something in common.

Tolerance.

I think that tolerance has gotten a bad rap in recent years.  Some people hear the word, “tolerance,” and they think that you mean “approval.”  And that’s not what tolerance is at all.  Tolerance is the ability to accept that something you dislike exists.  Think of tolerance, in fact, as endurance.  Something may be painful to you, or distasteful to you, but you nevertheless endure it with grace and aplomb.  I have tolerated many a continuing legal education lecture through the years....

You don’t have to like it.  You don’t even have to endorse it.  But humility, patience, and generosity of spirit can allow you to live in peace knowing that something you think is wrong exists in the world.

That’s tolerance.

There are a lot of people who don’t want to tolerate gay marriage.  They find it morally offensive.  I get that.  I tolerate that.  I can even sympathize with those feelings and thoughts.  Because there are a lot of legal things that I find immoral and/or distasteful, but I tolerate them because I live in this civil society that permits them.  (Example:  the death penalty.)  And it seems clearer and clearer that the law of equal protection and due process will extend to the marriages of same sex couples throughout this land, and sooner rather than later.  Not everyone has to like it.  But trying to find a way to tolerate it while remaining true to oneself is a virtue for which we can all strive.

As for the breastfeeding and the over-achieving parent behavior, well, let’s try to give each other a break, shall we?  Not everyone is going to make the same choices as you do, and that’s okay.  In fact, we make the choices that are best for us.  For some of us, that’s breastfeeding and making elaborate Valentine cards for our kids (sometimes simultaneously!).  For others of us, it’s Enfamil and dollar store Valentine cards with Dum Dums suckers taped to the front of them.  Whatever it is we choose, that’s okay.  No child will be damaged by a non-homemade Valentine card, nor will any child be damaged by elaborate homemade ones.  The worst thing that could happen is that the other grown-ups will talk behind their hands in judgment of your slackerdom or over-achiever syndrome.  (Something I’m guilty of myself, I confess.)  Rather than do either, we should gracefully nod, and tolerate the different choices of our neighbors.  “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.”  Proverbs 16:24.  (I love Proverbs.)  It’s good to remember that, when thinking of our neighbors.

All this being said, we should not tolerate everything.  Some things are worth the fight.  (For me, women’s rights, human dignity.)  And, I suppose, that we must choose what battles we will fight and what things we can tolerate notwithstanding our disapproval.  What is worth it to us?  And are there things for which we can turn the other cheek, or drop our untossed stones, understanding that we are also not perfect?

Which of course brings me to the first topic I considered writing about today:  the relaxation of care that comes with age.  In my forties, it’s true that I just do not have the fire in my belly to become indignant or fight back about every slight.  In my forties, I’m becoming more “live and let live” and less “you’re doing it wrong.”  It doesn't mean I don't have passion or that I'm world weary.  But my two-score-plus years have given me a lot of patience, gratitude and perspective.  So here in my forties, I tolerate a lot . . . mostly gladly.

We’d all be a lot happier, I think, if, rather than seethe and gnash our teeth, we would just blow it off and get us a beer when something irks us.  (Or a red wine.  Boxed, even.  I’m not picky, I’ll tolerate whatever you’ve got.  Cheers, friends.)

Oh, hey!

Tomorrow's Valentine's Day, one of the two most emotionally manipulative holidays of the year. (The other being New Year's Eve.)

Valentine's Day, the day when everyone who is single is made to feel worthless by a society and culture that prizes shopping, couplehood, and drama. 

I remember those Valentine's Days in college when the front entry table in the sorority house would fill with flowers. How obnoxious it was when a girl would get two bouquets!  (Not that she could help it, but it was still obnoxious.). And worse, how it felt a little not-good when there wasn't a bouquet for me.

My husband remembers what I wore to work that first Valentine's Day we knew each other, barely a week after he started working at our formerly mutual employer:  it was a black tee-shirt with "Love Stinks" written across the chest in red rhinestones. (Hat tip to the J. Giles Band....)

And that's pretty much how I felt about it. Valentine's Day could take a long walk off a short plank, for all I cared. "You can keep your heart-shaped Whitman's sampler, thanks. I'm going to get drunk by myself on this bottle if screw top red wine watching Bridget Jones's Diary and Bend It Like Beckham.... by myself."

I mean, I wanted to ignore this loathesome holiday, but the culture wouldn't let me. They set up tents of roses in the grocery store parking lots, for the love of Pete!  I couldn't even safely shop for my Velveeta and Rotel tomatoes that would accompany my cheap-ass wine on my All by Myself movie night. Geez. 

Valentine's Day was not a fun day. 

But it's not just the singletons who suffer on Valentine's Day. For the attached, Valentine's Day can be filled with unfulfilled expectations. If one's sweetheart doesn't sweet it up in just the right way one expects (will he propose?!), then the Sweet Day of Love turns instantly into the Bitter Day of Recrimination and Regret. 

It's a meanace, this holiday, built mostly of red roses, woe and chocolate.

It's only, now, in my 40s and happily married, that I don't still revile this insidious day the way I did in days of yore.  (Though I'm still no big fan of the Day of Cupid.)

We happily minimize its significance in our house. The Working Dad and I know we value each other every day. We don't need Valentine's Day to help us along. 

Still, I've got two sweet guys in my life who deserve a hug and kiss every day. And they'll get them tomorrow too, same as every day.  (Plus, one of them may get Duplos and a book.)

In church, I used to hear all the time that we should keep Easter and Christmas in our hearts all year long, not just when the holiday rolls around. I'd like to advocate for that for Valentine's Day as well -- show our loved ones we love them every day (even the singletons), not just in a grand display on the day that FTD tells us to do it. 

Love doesn't stink, after all. But schlocky commercialization and unreasonable expectations sure do.  

Happy Valentine's Day, friends.  Here's hoping your day is schlock-free and lovely. 

Only 4% of Your Day....

"A one hour work out is only 4% of your day. No excuses."

I just saw this on one of those inspirational weight loss, um, posters? on Pinterest. 

It's meant, obviously, to inspire you to get up off the sofa and exercise, rather than fret or excuse yourself that you're too busy and haven't the time to exercise regularly. 

But the thing assumes that you've got 4% of your day to spare. I know, I know, no excuses. But this tool can be as much guilt-tripper, stress-inducer as motivator. 

How do I know?  I saw the thing at 5:30 a.m., when I woke up to exercise. 

Let me just break my working mom day down into percentages. 

Sleep, average 7 hours -- 29%

Get self and child ready for the day -- 2 hours -- 8%

Commute to work -- 1 hour -- 4%

Work -- 8 hours -- 33%

Commute from work and pick up son from school -- 1.5 hour -- 6.25%

Cook dinner, eat it, ensure kid eats -- 1.5 hours -- 6.25%

Bathe kid, read books and put him to bed -- 1.5 hours -- 6.25%

So that leaves an hour and a half of the day (6.25%!) for all the other stuff I need to get done in the day (you know, continue to have a relationship with my husband, take care of the diabetic cat, laundry, plan a third birthday party).... And that's IF traffic's not bad, IF the kid cooperates, IF I don't have to work late....  Oh, and somehow I need to to fit into that 1.5 hours time to relax and maybe have an avocation or read a book or write a blog post or talk with a friend or something.... 

So yeah, suddenly 4% of my day seems like a hell of a lot of time. Especially when you consider that that "4%" does not include the time it takes get dressed to work out and shower afterwards.... 

Which is why I'm up before six.... And why I usually sleep in my work out gear or sometimes work out in my pajamas (like today - exercise bike, weights).... Because giving up sleep is the only way I can figure out to fit that "only 4%" into my day.  Something else has to give -- and since neither my job, my kid nor traffic are options for time-compromise, it's got to be my sleep. Not so motivating. Not so easy after all....  Get off my back, Pinterest, I'm doing my best. 

The case for getting married when and if the time is right to get married.

Why do people feel like they need to prescribe to us the ideal age at which to reach some milestone or another?  I guess the marriage topic is hot these days because I've recently seen articles making "the case for" marrying "young," marrying after you are "established," and not marrying at all, each full of silent judgments about the choices not advocated within their margins. 

I did not and should not have married "young."  (Although, from the vantage point of 43, age 37, the age at which I did get married, seems dewy and fresh, like a blooming daisy on a sunny spring morn.)

Had I married "young," I would surely have also divorced young, and maybe multiple times.  I did not want a divorce.  None of my early boyfriends (and I think those of you guys with whom I am still friendly and who read this blog will agree with me) would have worked out as a lifelong commitment. There were personality problems or aspirational problems or timing problems or maturity problem -- or some combination of all of the above -- with both of us. So it's best I didn't marry young.  Life has worked out well because I waited until I was "established."

But, truthfully, it wasn't a conscious choice to wait to age 37. It just happened that way.  But I'm glad that it did. I'm glad of the fortuitous break ups of ill-fitting relationships before time and obligation turned them into ill-fitting marriages.  What actually happened is that I had more-or-less decided that life might not have marriage in my cards by about age 34.  And then The Working Dad started working in my office. And....a little under three years later, and the turning of several events in the meantime that are none of your beeswax, and, ta-da!, we were Mr. and Mrs.  There was no grand plan, but I'm glad the thing worked out the way it did.

And I will go out on a limb and say that I, at least, wonder whether The Working Dad and I would have clicked at all, and if we had clicked, whether we would have made it long term, if we had met a decade earlier. People change, and maybe we wouldn't have been right for each other in the 90s the way we were in the Aughts.

That being said, I know folks who married "young" who are doing just fine. It was the right thing for them to do. They shouldn't have waited 'til middle age like me. 

And I know people who have chosen to remain single who are living happy, fulfilling lives. That's the right thing for them. 

Why must we be so prescriptive?  Whatever your path to happiness, isn't that the right way?

So here is the last thing I'll say:  if something within you makes you read an article to justify your path, maybe it's your path that's gone awry, not those of the men and women who have chosen a different one. Maybe ask yourself why you need validation of your choice from a piece of fluffy trend journalism rather than by consulting your own heart.